A passive optical network (PON) is one system for providing network access over “the last mile”. PON may be a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) network with passive splitters positioned in an optical distribution network (ODN) to enable a single feeding fiber from a central office to serve multiple customer premises. PON may employ different wavelengths for upstream and downstream transmissions. Some examples of PON technologies that are available in the industry may include the Ethernet passive optical networks (EPONs) defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Gigabit-capable PONs (GPONs) defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T). The EPONs specified in IEEE documents 802.3ah and 802.3av, both of which are incorporated herein by reference, may leverage the techniques of Ethernet protocol to support P2MP connectivity with native Ethernet frames transport. The GPONs specified in ITU-T documents G.984 and G.987.3, both of which are incorporated herein by reference, may leverage the techniques of Synchronous Optical Networking/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/SDH) and Generic Framing Protocol (GFP) to transport Ethernet frames. The IEEE EPONs and the ITU-T GPONs may employ different protocols to transport Ethernet frames, but both EPONs and GPONs may employ continuous broadcast for downstream transmission and time division multiple access (TDMA) for upstream transmission. The continuous downstream broadcast transmission may cause customer premises equipment to be powered on at all times and may not be energy efficient.